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RMS updates flood and earthquake models

More details on UK inland flood risk and earthquake risk for Western Europe

Risk Management Solutions (RMS) has upgraded its UK Inland Flood Model and released a suite of new earthquake models for Europe.

The upgrades will enable a finer level of detail than ever before, said the risk modeller.

The RMS UK Inland Flood Model takes account of all causes of inland flood, including rivers and minor streams overflowing, as well as flash flooding resulting from excessive rainfall.

“Last summer’s UK floods were a dramatic and costly reminder of the need for a comprehensive view of flood risk,” commented Dr. Alice Stuart-Menteth, UK flood model manager at RMS.

According to some estimates, over 50% of the properties flooded were believed to be outside the major floodplain.

“Areas that were not deemed to be at risk by the Environment Agency were washed out by extreme rainfall which overwhelmed the drainage systems, resulting in an unexpected barrage of claims for those insurers that had not accounted for flash flood risk.”

The new model allows users to zone in on the flood risk for properties at street level, rather than just within a specific postcode.

It also includes a ‘continuous time-stepping’ approach, whereby the importance of previous rainfall and flood events on factors such as soil conditions are taken into account.

Via the integration of the Environment Agency (EA) flood defense database, the model includes more data on the status of flood defenses within the UK,

“The Association of British Insurers is encouraging its members to introduce risk-related pricing to incentivize policyholders to implement flood risk reduction measures,” commented Dr. Stuart-Menteth. “The new model equips them with the analytics to do this.”

Europe Earthquake Models

RMS also launched a suite of new earthquake models for Europe, including France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK, and upgraded its model for Portugal.

Dr. Andrew Sorby, Europe earthquake model manager at RMS, said: “Earthquake risk across much of Western Europe is characterized by rare but potentially very damaging events. Many properties are vulnerable as they have not been made to withstand ground-shaking and the exposure is high.”

The UK Flood and European Earthquake models are being launched with version 8.0 of the RiskLink® and RiskBrowser® modeling platforms.

Modelling flood is a complex undertaking, owing to the numbers of variables that need taken into consideration, but the range of models is gradually growing which, together with improvements in mapping, will increase the confidence of insurers and reinsurers. By Rebecca Cheetham